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Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Jushi @ Plaza Damas, Hartamas

Last weekend, a whole group of us wandered towards Plaza Damas to get some last minute Christmas shopping done plus celebrate a friend, Ms. J's birthday. She recommended this place which I have not heard before until recently as the local paper did a write up about them this month. According to my friend, this place has been opened for almost a year already. It's tucked upstairs in another level of the Plaza which I have not explored before and it directly opposite Yoga Zone.

It's a kind of fusion Japanese place - juices and sushi hence the Jushi name. We ordered quite a variety of different juices but I only took pictures of two - my Ultimate C which had lots of Vitamin C from a mixture of starfruit, lemon and orange juices while my friend, Ms. C had the Tropical Sunrise, a mixture of orange, pineapple and watermelon juices. What amazed us was the colour of her juice as that combo made a lovely peach coloured juice which eventually seperated to two tones after a while. Besides juices, there are also smoothies and you can even add healthy supplements like wheatgrass, spirulina, ginseng, echinea to boost your wellbeing. My other friends had Paradise Special which was mango based, the Wake Up call which looked a bit like the Tropical Sunrise. You can also mix your own blend of juice if you wish for something more unique.

After that healthy blast of juice, the food started arriving in droves. We had opted to share the food so we could get a better variety. Ordering of the food was left to the birthday girl since it was her treat that day plus she had been there before. First up was the Ebi Gyoza, which was prawn stuffed dumplings that have been deep fried.

Next was something unusual, Salad rolls which has tempura crisps (i.e. the bits that fall off whenever you deep fry tempura or more aptly, the bits of tempura batter), chopped up crab stick rolls (kani in Japanese), a bit of butterhead lettuce, mayonnaise and sushi rice all wrapped up in a crispy nori seaweed. This was not too bad especially the crispy bits which added a nice crunch.

We ordered one rice dish, the Yakiniku Don that had slices of beef grilled and sprinkled with sesame seeds. What was unusual was it came with shredded red pickles, asparagus and cherry tomatoes that made it a colourful dish.

We also had an assortment of rolls: Fresh Salmon Roll in front, next was the Teriyaki Chicken Roll and last was the California Roll with the crabstick (kani) and ebiko.

No Japanese meal will be complete without a bit of salmon sashimi that came in a lovely fan shape.

This place prides itself with serving fusion sushi like this Popiah Maki which uses popiah skin as a wrapper instead of the usual nori seaweed sheets. I liked this fusion style as it was pretty light and tasty with the teeny weeny bit of mayonnaise on top.

We finished off with the Dragon Maki, that was topped with thin slices of creamy avocado. The inside was eel (unagi). I liked this as the avocado was really soft and melt in the mouth. The food at this place is not too bad and prices will not kill your pocket. The place is nice and breezy (we sat outside under lots of fans). The only downer of this place was service as the wait staff did not seem to understand much English and had to be helped out by their captain a few times when we made further enquiries on the menu. They also offered a Jushi card for free that entitles you to a 10% discount (I'm not very sure if you have to spend a certain amount to qualify but they gave us one) and if you're a Yoga Zone member, you also get the 10% discount.

(If you come from Hartamas Shopping Centre, go all the way up and walk out of the glass doors to Plaza Damas. You will need to take the escalators up to the next level and Jushi is just opposite the escalators)

*Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here is entirely based on my personal tastebuds and may vary for others. The reviewer also declares that she has not received any monetary or non-monetary compensation from the restaurant for writing this review.

8 comments:

q - hope you like it. Take the makis and rolls but not the raw sashimi. I thought they weren't super fresh but then you pay only RM8.80 for a plate so you can't really expect fresh ones like the expensive Jap places.